


in the darkness, you told me everything

by happyberry



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Consensual, Dreams, Fate & Destiny, M/M, Throne Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-09-28 01:30:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17173277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happyberry/pseuds/happyberry
Summary: There is an invisible line between them, a thread pulled thin and taut, and every so often Noctis feels Ardyn pluck at it and delight in the sound it makes.(Instead of keeping Noctis in the dark, a mix of dreams and reality shed light on the connection between him and Ardyn, causing their final meeting in the throne room to take a different turn.)





	in the darkness, you told me everything

There’s the first hint of some deeper connection when there’s mythril in the air, as they walk through water in moonlight above the depths of Steyliff. Noctis is the only one who dares to keep up with the man leading the way, the others hanging back as if compelled to keep some distance.

Ardyn speaks in grandiose terms and with his hands, communicating in flourishes and flicks of the wrist. His voice is lyrical and Noctis feels ill at ease listening to him, responding to his assertions only in hums and quiet consideration, pretending to be more relaxed than he actually is.

“Of course,” Ardyn says, “not all of us can travel the wild moors with bodyguards in tow.”

“Friends,” Noctis corrects, unable to stop himself.

“Oh, is that what you consider them? My apologies.” There’s half a grin and the shadow of some tall tree branch on Ardyn’s face. “I would say the point stands irregardless. Any man who knows from birth he will sit on a throne one day is set apart from those around him, even if he desperately wishes that weren’t the case.”

Noctis says nothing, feigning boredom and rolling his eyes to the side, but it’s the first time that he thinks _something isn’t right here_ in a concrete way. They’ve known there’s more to this man since they met him, but only now does it occur to Noctis that the _more_ might be an invisible line between them, a thread pulled thin and taut.

It’s as if Noctis has just felt Ardyn pluck at it and as if Ardyn had delighted in the sound he made.

They get their mythril and it takes months, years, for Noctis to realize the significance of the note that was played that night.

* * *

 

Before that, there is the Disc and the night in the caravan, when Noctis finds himself unable to sleep against all odds.

He tosses and turns on the pull out couch he’s sharing with Ignis, who looks just as regal asleep as he does awake, arms folded across his chest and eyelashes fluttering. Noctis can’t remember the last time he was awake while Ignis was asleep and he spends a few groggy minutes just watching the other man before sighing and pulling himself out of bed.

Prompto and Gladio won a bet they made while following Ardyn on the road, something spurned on by a disagreement regarding the make and model of the man's car, and as a result they have the actual bed that's stuffed in the back end of the caravan. Ardyn himself is nowhere to be seen, a fact which makes Noctis’ skin crawl in the way it used to when he wasn’t accustomed to eyes being on him wherever he went.

He considers poking at someone’s shoulder and waking them up, but it seems tantamount to admitting he’s unnerved by this strange man they’ve somehow found themselves travelling with, and he’s still floundering through this whole act he decided to put on from the moment they got the news in Galdin Quay.

_Everything is fine. I am fine._

Outside the night air is brisk and a light breeze ruffs at the hem of his shirt, dewy grass crunching under the soles of his boots.

Ardyn is leaning against his car, as if in wait.

“Dear prince,” he says, even though Noctis is both more and less than that now, “to what do I owe the unexpected pleasure of your company at this hour?”

Noctis is struck by the inadvisable urge to ask if he can stop talking like someone out of some ancient play for one second. Instead what comes out is, “I can’t sleep,” in a mumble that he imagines must be difficult to decipher. Ignis is always on him about enunciation, especially in the morning.

Ardyn hardly seems perplexed, however. “Ah, it happens to the best of us, I suppose. Although, the gossip is that sleep comes easily to you, so I must say I’m surprised.”

Noctis stops short of leaning against Ardyn’s car with him, just peers inside without bothering to hide his intent. There are cassette tapes on the passenger’s seat, a few closed boxes stuffed into the back, but otherwise nothing of note.

“People talk about my sleeping habits?” Noctis asks, straightening up and crossing his arms over his chest, trying to imagine a context wherein that would be interesting conversation.

“Of course. You must remember, you are _fascinating_ to a certain subsect of the population,” Ardyn says, gesturing vaguely towards the horizon, before bringing his hand to rest on Noctis’ shoulder for a brief second.

Noctis starts at the touch, surprised by it and the reaction it incites in him, his skin buzzing with warmth and his heart beating as if he’s been shocked by a stray powerline.

Ardyn smiles, showing teeth, like he knows exactly what just happened.

“I would suppose,” he continues as if nothing happened, “that it’s the same people who wait with bated breath for news of the Oracle’s safe passage.”

“That’s not—” Noctis takes a deep breath and shakes his head. It’s like Ignis had said to him yesterday. This strange man from who knows where is only trying to force him off-kilter. He’s a distraction, in the grand scheme of things, and Noctis would do well to brush off his attempts at riling him.

“Whatever you say,” he shrugs, and now he does lean against the car, a motion which seems to please Ardyn, who smiles in a way that makes Noctis think of old cartoons. A sly cat who’s caught a canary. “Can I ask you something?”

“I would daresay you can ask me whatever you would like, so long as you can form the question.”

Noctis is pretty sure he’s never met someone more insufferable, more in love with the sound of his own voice, than Ardyn.

“What are you getting out of this?” Noctis asks, blunt as he can be. He’s been told before that he’s about as subtle as the unsharpened edge of one of the most used blades in his armiger, but he just doesn’t see the point in taking what he wants to say and wrapping it up in a bow.

“A thought-provoking question,” Ardyn says after half a second of hesitation, and now he’s looking at Noctis as if seeing him for the first time. Eyes like a harvest moon, just as wide and bright, raking him over. “Can’t I just want to help? Does there need to be some ulterior motive lying in wait?”

“No, there doesn’t need to be, but there is.”

Noctis knows the others sense it, but he believes their thought process begins and ends with this man being a threat due to his eccentricities and witticisms. Noctis feels sure both of those things lie on the surface—the truth of the matter is buried deep below.

“Hmm.” Ardyn sounds wary, but doesn’t look it, and for a minute Noctis can only think about what it would be like to touch him again.

He’s pretty sure it would destroy him, and he’s struggling to see a reason why that would be a bad thing.

“Suppose I were to say that I have been waiting for this moment a long time.” Ardyn fills the silence between them with words that are deliberate, like steps taken on the thin ice of a newly frozen lake. “That your presence is reason enough for me to guide you to your destination, and happily.”

“I’d say that was weird,” Noctis admits, because it would be. But it also wouldn’t necessarily be any weirder than the rest of his life, in a way.

Ardyn laughs, humorlessly, and tears his eyes away from Noctis’. “Naturally,” he says, and his voice is now artificially warm, smooth and untroubled in a way that can’t be real. “And I would say it is best you get back to bed, I think you’ll find you have quite a day ahead of you.”

Noctis heads back into the caravan with a mixture of confusion and anticipation swirling inside of him and he dreams that night of cloying darkness in the shape of wings. Soft feathers against his skin, whisper soft, and words like smoke around him, so clear as he sleeps but gone in the morning.

* * *

 

It’s hard to look at Ardyn straight on, Noctis decides.

Maybe it’s the frankly ridiculous outfit that he wears even in the heat of Lestallum or the hungry gleam in his eyes, but whatever it is, it makes Noctis blink a few times too many to get the man into focus.

He mentions this to Prompto when it’s just the two of them in the firelight shadow of the pitched tent, Noctis chewing idly on what’s left of his dinner while Prompto digs through his camera bag.

“Huh?” Prompto says, pouting his lips. “What do you mean?”

“I dunno.” Noctis pulls the crust off his bread and sops it in gravy, being careful not to let it drip on his clothes. He’d never hear the end of that. “Like, he’s just weird. So weird it’s hard to look at him and see the full picture.”

Prompto smiles nervously, the way he often does when he feels like he’s missed something and doesn’t want to admit it. “I guess, hm. Maybe I’m just not looking at him as much as you are?”

“Probably not,” Noctis agrees, gathering his things and getting to his feet. “ _I’m_ not scared of a guy who looks like he got into a fight with a comb and lost. So.”

“Aw, come on!”

Noctis laughs as he walks away, but it's hollow, and he doesn’t mention the feeling to anyone else. It’s a mistake, but it’s one of many in relation to Ardyn, and who’s to say where he lost the plot. It could have been any number of moments like this. Or maybe it was all of them.

A gradual loosening right up until the point that it was too late.

But with pavement sprawling out in front of them like it was laid for their journey alone, Noctis does what he can to focus on his friends and the days they have left together. They eat in grease-stained diners, ordering from menus that are already sticky with the fingerprints of those who sat in the booths before them.

They take their time as they trek over the sprawling emptiness of Duscae and the marshland of the Vesperpool. Stopping to pose for pictures with Kenny Crow and to forage cooking ingredients in the middle of nowhere because Ignis knows he can use those potatoes in _something_ and they all want to know what. Photoshoots on the coast and early morning runs across the beach, nudging knees with Gladio in the back of the Regalia as he leans his head back and weighs the cost and benefits of falling asleep right there.

At night, the light of a Haven glows blue and Noctis has never given much thought to why, but it occurs to him that it’s the same shining sapphire as his own magic, like he’s always been tied to these spots and just didn’t know it until now.

He wonders, sometimes, what the light of the runes is meant to keep out, because he thinks it’s more than just the hulking daemons they run across in the dead of night, far from shelter. He thinks there’s something larger than that in the distance, something that knows to disappear when he looks over his shoulder.

It’s easy to get lost in the camaraderie around the fire at night, stealing Prompto’s camera to take pictures of him while he dives around like he’s in an action movie, Gladio and Ignis cleaning up after them in the background—but once they’re in the tent it’s harder to ignore.

The feeling that there’s something out there, oppressive in its all-consuming need to lurk ever out of their sight. Just beyond the safety of whatever Haven they’re staying at that night. Something watching.

Noctis sleeps fitfully when they’re out in the open like that, his mind full of a story that he can’t hold onto when the morning comes.

More and more he wakes up frustrated, knowing he’s missing something, but not knowing how to go about finding it.

And by the time he thinks maybe it’s that unearthly sound that played between him and Ardyn once, however many weeks ago, it’s too late. The damage has already been done.

* * *

 

There are days that meld into one another under the midday sun, the pendulum of time swinging back and forth between raids of Niflheim military bases and the ill-advised traversing of abandoned mines and ice-filled caves.

Dirt kicked up on the sides of the Regalia and on his skin and Noctis enjoys their stays in hotel rooms, but never really feels like he gets clean.

He’s in the bathroom of a restaurant on the outskirts of Lestallum and when he looks up from washing his hands he sees a trail of what must be but _can’t_ be blood dripping from his nose. It’s black and sticky and he trips backwards, tasting the heavy color of it on his lips.

Breathing hard on the floor he tries to get his bearings before pulling himself up by the porcelain rim of the sink and confirming his suspicions in the mirror.

It’s gone, like it was never there.

He begs off a card game back in their hotel room and heads to the roof.

Ardyn is there and for whatever reason it doesn’t surprise him, the solid form of a man he has known for mere weeks, standing against the night sky.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Noctis says, and Ardyn makes a delighted sort of sound in the back of his throat, like Noctis has finally joined him in a game he was playing by himself up until now.

“Does your belief in everything around you ever waver when looking up at the sky like this?” Ardyn asks and Noctis knows what he means, even if he doesn’t trust the question.

“You’re always saying weird stuff.” Noctis, in the face of something he’d rather not give an answer to, deflects. It’s one of his best traits, in terms of being expected to rule one day. Being diplomatic doesn’t come to him easily, but he doesn’t give out information he doesn’t want to when he can help it.

“An eccentricity that develops with age, I’m afraid. To be a paragon of normalcy such as your friends is a fate that eludes me, and you as well.”

There is a vaguely menacing tinge to Ardyn’s voice that’s been there since they met, a leer in his tone even when it’s not on his face.

Be that as it may, Noctis can’t _disagree_ , he can only turn and face Ardyn full on, pretending the difference in their heights doesn’t bother him, and say, “What’s your aim with all this?”

And he means the word _all_ in its encompassing nature—from the clear as day ‘always one step behind you’ nature of this man to the more murky aspects, the things Noctis has no proof come from him, but which bear no other explanation, the dreams and the shadows in the distance, the string pulled taut between them.

The feeling when Ardyn reaches out and touches him again, back of his hand to Noctis’ cheek, a caress that Noctis leans into with his eyes narrowed.

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.” Ardyn’s light tone of voice is belied by the hard gaze of his eyes. Always a duality with him, never a straitforward sign of his intent.

“Try me,” Noctis says, standing at the very edge of a precipice never having learned what it means to have no safety net below, nothing ready to catch him if he falls.

He wakes with a start and knows instantly that he was _not_ dreaming, his mind scrambling for purchase, grabbing onto the wisps of memories. _How many times_ , he wonders, _have we had that conversation?_

He goes to the hallway and basks in the hum of the vending machines, takes the hotel’s notepad and pen with him and writes down what he can remember, drawing arrows and underlining words as he becomes sure of a handful of things.

First, and most obvious, Ardyn isn’t truly who he says he is—not a chancellor, not from Niflheim, not even a man—that much is obvious.

Second, there is something between them that is more than the sum of their parts. When Ardyn touches him, skin to skin, Noctis feels the same way he does when he pulls the weapon of one of his ancestor’s into his armiger, the cool burn of a fire that never goes out.

So, third, and most impossibly—Noctis paces a few times in the flickering lights of the hallway and wonders how to put it into words.

He’s there and not there, caught in between being and _not_.

Like the wisps of his dreams, like the smoke of a fire, he can’t grab onto this concept and hold on.

So he lets it sit and fester for one night and then two, across the ocean and all the way to a place with a different name.

* * *

 

“I’ve been asking the wrong question,” Noctis says, “haven’t I?”

Altissia is a land of blood and water and wine, and Ardyn blends right in for once. He looks comfortable amongst the architecture, the ornate gondolas and the candle-lit floating restaurants. He’s hardly the strangest dressed person walking around, though he’s certainly a contender, just not the runaway winner like he was back home.

Noctis has drifted from his companions, leaving the others to their own devices, finding himself sitting at the edge of the city, moonlight reflected back at him.

And, of course, right in Ardyn’s sights.

“You have, but it’s not a problem unique to you,” he says, his words are like something out of a book, hardly like anything a real person would say.

(Because Ardyn is caught in between, both real and _not_.)

“If I knew who you were, what you want would be obvious.” Noctis ventures the guess, the clearest bit of information he’s been able to work out on diner napkins and hotel notepads.

“Very good,” Ardyn replies, and that—that affirmation, that praise—goes right to Noctis’ gut in exactly the way he knows it shouldn’t. “I’m afraid the answer to that question may cost more than you’re willing to pay.”

Willing or able, Noctis weighs it all in a split second and doesn’t care for the logistics of it all.

“Try me,” he says, and he’s said that before, more than once. A litany of moments through time falling into place in front of him. “And let me keep the answer this time.”

Ardyn’s smile is sharp, the edge of a knife, and the touch of his hand to Noctis’ chin makes him jolt.

Thumb on Noctis’ bottom lip and Ardyn’s voice is practically feral.

“As always, stop me if it gets to be too much,” he says, and Noctis nods, alright, fine, what else has he got to lose?

Ardyn’s mouth is on his like an ambush and Noctis’ eyes are closing and he’s in the dark. Understanding all of this from touch and taste. He’s been kissed before, gently and behind closed doors. Giggling into it and feeling guilty but justified—he had to practice somehow.

Now he’s in the same place as his wife-to-be, a block over from the ostentatious display of her wedding dress, and he's being eaten alive by another man on the pier, one step away from falling into the great mouth of the ocean.

Ardyn kisses like he’s breathing in great gulps, licking at the inside of Noctis’ mouth with a fervor Noctis didn’t know was possible. Leaving him gasping when he pulls away for half a second. And then Noctis leans back in, pushes forward and grabs onto the lapels of Ardyn’s jacket, chasing that _taste_ again.

Just this side of liquor, more sweet but no less addictive. One of Ardyn’s hands on the side of his face and the other on his hip, pressing into the skin there. _He would leave a bruise_ , Noctis thinks deliriously, _if I let him, he would hurt me._

_He would hurt me._

In the end the answer comes in the form of the stains on Luna’s lily white dress. The color spoils him for red wine forever after, his mind never letting him forget the way the fabric clung to her wound when he held her.

The truth is, he loved her fiercely and would have been happy with her, at least as happy as he was anywhere else. They would have toasted to good health—for each other, for their friends, for their nations. But instead Leviathan roared behind them and a man of no consequence stood in their way, and he watched Luna leave him before either of them were ready for her to.

From his vantage point it had seemed like the world was ending and, really, Noctis could have forgiven Ardyn the urge to destroy the world and everything within it, but not this particular life. It felt a thousand times more cruel, to take one piece and leave the rest of it, rather than destroy it all.

He fights with a power he hasn’t earned yet and only remembers afterwards how it felt to be devoured, how it felt to know this man would hurt him, and how it felt when he finally did.

There is blue light, a flower, a ring, and a voice. There are his friends. He has lost so much, but not everything, so he has to keep going.

* * *

 

Inside the machine that is Zegnatus, Noctis stumbles through the darkness.

He’s long past guilt and regret and has landed firmly at the feet of _anger_ , an emotion he’s never been allowed to nurture for long.

As such, he never learned the art of turning anger inside out, of pointing it at the person responsible. His anger is, instead, a bevy of knives pointed blade-first at his own skin.

He’s a wounded animal, fighting his way past daemons and towards the center of the giant beast that fuels the Niflheim military. Every time he turns around, there’s something out for his blood and a new comment reverberating through the clean metal hallways.

 _Look at you. All by your lonesome,_ Ardyn says, voice curling in the air like smoke, nothing but a shadow moving through the halls, MT soldiers at his heel. _How does it feel to be powerless?_

The worst of it all is that he’s right in some small way, and the words creep under Noctis’ skin like burrowing insects, festering in his self-inflicted wounds. Who is he but a child prince, guided by hand through life by more practiced advisors? Not even capable of keeping his friends safe without the help of something he never earned, an armiger given to him by birth.

There’s a point he’s not proud of, where he falls to his knees in what he hopes doesn’t look like supplication.

 _It must be tiring,_ Ardyn’s voice croons in his ear, _having to run all the time._

And Noctis, palms on concrete and hair hanging in his eyes, feels the desperate urge to let out a sob because he’s so, _so_ exhausted.

His father always said it was on a journey like this that you learned the truth about yourself, and Noctis sees that now, as he forces himself to his feet and continues onwards, chasing his own shadow, the only thing he’s good for.

 _Good,_ Ardyn’s voice climbs up his spine, seeps into his skin, _very good, Noctis._

He dreams in one of the sparsely furnished hideaways, on a bottom bunk that belonged to someone else, once.

“It all belongs to someone else,” Ardyn tells him as he sits casually upon the throne in the citadel of Insomnia, restored to its former glory, stained glass patterns on the windows and silver fixtures gleaming in the shining rays of the sun.

Noctis, hand to his heart, can’t bare to say anything more than two words.

“To you.”

“Some would call me usurper.” Ardyn stands, all whisking clothes and crooked grin, and as he descends the stairs Noctis sees the sudden, stark reality like a flash of light: dust and darkness, blackness like dried blood on Ardyn’s face, and the ever closing distance between them. “But I prefer another name.”

They’re back in the sunlight and Noctis might have blinked. Ardyn’s face is handsome as a king’s and the throne room picturesque, like the open pages of a story book.

Noctis says nothing, even though the words are on the tip of his tongue, the taste of them bitter in the way unwelcome truths always are.

“It is a shame,” Ardyn says, just over his shoulder now, the two of them looking up at an empty throne. “In another time, we might have shared the honor.”

Cold, piercing pain and Noctis stumbles forward, Ardyn catching him around his waist and tutting as he begins to cough and sputter blood. He can feel it rolling down his chin in hot, sticky stripes, and he knows even before it starts to dot the floor that it’s black as night.

“But you never know, my boy,” Ardyn is saying, as the world begins to schism and skew, as Noctis begins to see the blue glow of the Crystal and realizes that he was never really sleeping, “we still might.”

* * *

 

The Crystal is darkness immemorial, closing in on him.

He half-expects to hear a voice, but instead he waits in the darkness’ unforgiving grasp, drowning in an ocean of ink for what feels like—but can’t possibly be—days, months and years.

The thought of moving strikes him off and on, but the ability eludes him. For stretches of time he forgets that he has something _to_ move, reminded only of his fingers when something like air slithers past them.

There is _something_ in this place with him, a presence that he can’t physically name, though his mind supplies two possible answers, like two sides of a coin.

Lord of the Astrals or the Lost King of Lucis, one or the other.

Noctis, suspended above some bottomless pit, inside of the steadfast grip of his fate, waits to see which way it will fall.

When the scales tip to one side he isn’t asleep, but he wakes up all the same. It’s a familiar feeling, the jolt of energy that sits in his gut and the urge to grab at something that isn’t there.

Opening his eyes to total blackness is somehow mundane. He’s most surprised that he can’t see his hands, though in hindsight he isn’t sure why he thought he would be able to. His most strident wish is to feel something, or someone, solid. To prove to himself that he still can.

_Welcome back._

The voice is familiar and Noctis settles back into the sound of it. He knows, somehow, that opening his mouth to speak would be useless, so he doesn’t try.

 _What can you tell me?_ The calm tone of his own voice soothes the world around him, and it’s only now that Noctis realizes the shadows that surely lurk just outside his field of vision have had their teeth bared until now.

 _Everything_ , the voice responds, and it holds true.

The favor of the Six may be lost to him, but there is a rush of wind at his back and he’s dropped into the greyscale streets of a place so familiar he cannot remember it’s name.

 _Solheim,_ the voice supplies, just as Noctis sees him.

Ardyn, kneeling on the ground in front of a child and her mother, holding the child’s arm in his hands. Her skin is covered in darkness like spiderwebs, unshed tears in her eyes as she tries to be brave.

“Look at me,” Ardyn is saying, so gently Noctis sucks in a breath, “just like that. Can you count to three?”

The little girl nods and Ardyn’s eyes, younger but still his, hold hers as they count together, “One...two...three.”

Noctis exhales as the mother gasps in joy, and the little girl grabs onto Ardyn’s sleeve, the skin of her arm bright and healthy as the scene melts away.

Noctis stumbles sideways into someone and apologizes before realizing he’s among a crowd, at a party not unlike the ones his own father used to have to beg him to attend. He’s pulled through groups of people by some invisible force, apologizing as he goes, though no one seems to notice his touch, even as he jostles them and causes them to spill their drinks.

He’s spun around in an alcove on the outskirts of it all, finding Ardyn with a man whose face makes Noctis pale.

 _Yes_ , the voice says humorlessly, _I’ve always found the resemblance quite striking_.

“You can’t abandon whatever you wish just to—to go gallivanting about,” Somnus says, because of course Noctis recognizes him from faded paintings and tapestries. The First King.

“It’s not gallivanting, brother,” Ardyn says, and Noctis wonders if he’s imagining the slight edge of contempt in his tone. “It’s healing something only I can heal. I have a duty—”

“You have a _duty_ here in these halls, Ardyn.” Somnus seems to notice that some people are starting to cast them sidelong glances and so he pulls Ardyn even further from the vestiges of the party, to a hallway that Noctis follows them into. “Or do you forget what the Astrals have said?”

“If only, as it’s impossible to when you’ve made it your job to constantly remind me.” Ardyn’s face is younger, more round, but there are bags under his eyes and his mouth is set into a frown in a way it wasn’t on the streets, with the little girl. “Would that I had your freedom to do with my life as I pleased, and yet here you remain as a thorn in my side.”

Somnus turns on his heel and the world shifts and revolves so that Noctis is dropped onto a bed in a dimly lit room, Ardyn at his side.

He flinches away instinctively, knocking their knees together and almost calling for something with a sharp edge from his armiger without pausing to think.

Then he realizes Ardyn’s face is streaked with tears, his hand held to his chest and his neck—Noctis steadies himself before reaching out and pushing Ardyn’s hair to the side to see the veins, dark as blackest night, that are spreading up from his shoulder.

“Why,” he realizes Ardyn is saying, so quietly he has to strain to hear. “I was only trying to help, so _why_?”

Noctis falls to the side and the whole thing goes with him, fading into the now familiar glow of blue light that tells Noctis that they’re standing in front of the Crystal. It’s the color he sees when he closes his eyes, and the color that he bathes in now with the ghost of Ardyn at his side.

He realizes with a start that Ardyn’s teeth are bared and his skin is grey and stained black, that they’re alone in a dank room, and that Ardyn has almost certainly already been rejected.

“You would be so cruel as to give me the power to take pain away,” Ardyn is saying, voice like a growl, “and then punish me for taking the selfsame action? Call me Accursed for doing with my gift what must be done and cast me out?”

There is no response and Noctis watches numbly as burgundy light flashes and the staff of a scythe appears in Ardyn’s hands, as he makes a sound of rage and attacks.

The room is ripped apart and Noctis falls through the floor into darkness, for a second frantically thinking, _No, take me back, don’t make me stay here anymore._

 _Don’t fret_ , the voice says, and he can feel the touch of it at the small of his back, pushing him forward. _I’m not keeping you in the dark any longer._

There are screams down the hallway that Noctis now stands at the end of and bars on the windows. Flagstone floors, walls that echo with the sound of his steps as he moves forward, and something that smells of blood.

He stops halfway there and puts a hand to the wall, listening to Ardyn beg for mercy and understanding.

 _You asked for this_ , the voice reminds him, and Noctis grits his teeth, clenches his fist, is well aware.

He makes the rest of the walk on unsteady feet and finds himself in front of a closed door. He reaches for the handle as the screams hit a fever pitch, Ardyn’s voice raw as he says he’ll do anything, _anything_ , for them to stop.

The door opens without resistance and Noctis forces himself to look, at the chains and the hooks, the bruises and the lacerations, the dried blood on the floor. Ardyn is strung up and quiet now, breathing shakily and whimpering.

 _In their defense,_ the voice says, as Noctis moves forward without thinking, _they couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t die. They must have thought me evil. And, really, can you blame them?_

Noctis hesitates when he gets close and then Ardyn’s eyes are on him, wide and delirious, not seeing through him like everyone else has since he got here. His lips are moving and dried with blood, but making no sound. Noctis thinks, then, of nights spent under the stars with the thing this man will become, and he’s struck by a sense of need that makes him lightheaded.

Ardyn’s hands are limp where they hang, but when Noctis touches his fingertips to the other man’s palm he jumps, jostling the entire frame of the device he’s tethered to. Noctis knows how it feels, like being struck down from on high.

A jolt of electricity coursing through both their veins, he slides their hands together and smiles shakily at Ardyn’s confused look, exhales when Ardyn’s eyes close. He almost looks peaceful, like that, their hands clasped and his breathing evening out.

It’s now or never.

Noctis pulls his hand away and starts undoing the tethers that keep Ardyn bound, taking on and then collapsing under the weight of Ardyn’s body, both of them falling to the floor, falling _through_ the floor, falling into—

The Crystal is darkness immemorial, closing in on him.

But this time, right from the beginning, there’s a voice, and it speaks to him.

* * *

 

Noctis finds his friends in the last vestiges of humanity. Which is to say, the diner in Hammerhead. Neon and chrome, the place where it all started so long ago.

Except that’s not true, Noctis knows now, with a sort of weariness that makes him understand his father better now that he’s dead than he ever did when he was alive. There was a voice in the insurmountable night of the Crystal, and it told him so. It told him everything.

He can’t share this while they sit around the campfire, one last time. They aren’t the same people he left behind, they’re carrying the boys they used to be on their backs. He sees that now.

Ignis refuses help with dinner and Gladio is tending to the fire, the two of them stalwart in their positions as ever, but quiet, contemplative. No, Noctis thinks, more than that. _Exhausted_.

Prompto is more calm than he was ten years ago, but still keyed up with nervous energy, and Noctis stupidly wonders how much of it has to do with the fact that camera batteries are hard to come by these days. He shakes the thought out of his head almost as soon as it enters, but he’s plagued by this dissonance—the difference between the boys he left behind and the men he sits with now.

They eat comfortably, settling into each other’s company as if they’ve never been apart, never less than four. Gladio tells them about Iris’ barricade plans in Lestallum, Ignis regales them with stories of various encounters he’s had when travelling about with bands of hunters, and Prompto swears up and down that he could build his own car now if he only had the parts, Cindy and Cid taught him how.

Noctis doesn’t offer up his missing ten years and none of them ask.

They only listen at the end of the night as he tells them how much they mean to him and how he hopes they understand that he might fail—that even if he were to succeed, he’s leaving them for good.

He can’t stop himself from crying, but refuses to look away from any of them.

Back straight, sitting tall, knowing he doesn’t have a chance without them, these brothers of his.

Together, they make the trip to Insomnia. The once-shining city is now like the wreckage of a ship washed ashore, a disaster zone with flickering lights and infected things creeping through alleyways, deserted otherwise.

The sound of their fighting travels through once busy corridors and long-forgotten alleyways, dust-filled subways and glass-strewn streets.

“What’s keeping the lights on?” Prompto murmurs when they rest in a safe room, halfway through the city.

“Not what, but _who_ ,” Ignis corrects, with a surreptitious turn of his head towards Noctis, who grits his teeth and steadfastly refuses to look up from the floor. It’s impossible, now, for Ignis to read the look in Noctis’ eyes, but Noctis can’t help but hide it, unwilling to believe that Ignis hasn’t managed to cheat not being able to see, and will sense his restlessness and the cause of it in some other way.

The next daemon they encounter barely has time to swing its claws and attack. Noctis warps behind it and rips through its skin, wielding his father’s sword and refusing to slow down.

He hears the voice from the Crystal in his mind, saying, _Only fools rush in_ , and thinks if that’s what he is, then so be it.

* * *

 

When he comes to the throne room, his friends collapsed behind him and his fallen comrades swaying above, he stumbles forward and drops to his knees.

_Finally, finally._

“It's such a splendid sight, to see a false king kneel in front of his true ruler. Look at me, my boy.”

Noctis tilts his head up and does just that, with what he hopes is a defiant look in his eyes.

Ardyn sits on the throne, legs spread wide and leaned back, every inch a usurper and every inch a king. He holds his left hand out in offering. “Come here,” he says, eyes flashing and Noctis rises and walks forward as if pulled by thread, unable to stop himself.

He comes before the throne more willingly than he ever thought possible, the echoes of his footsteps trailing in his wake, moonlight filtering over the both of them in this endless night they inhabit.

“Do you seek to end this?” Ardyn asks, as Noctis reaches out and touches his hand to Ardyn’s, like he did in the dream they shared.

The feeling of skin on skin is akin to static electricity, a sudden jolt of energy running down Noctis’ spine. He swallows against his dry throat and nods.

“For both of our sakes,” he says out loud at last, these words that have been in his head for so long now.

Ardyn turns his hand over and pulls him forward gently, so he’s standing just against the edge of the seat of the throne, between Ardyn’s spread legs. “I am...curious as to what would make you believe you have anything to offer me but violence.”

The air around them is still and Noctis knows they’re alone now, that this world is empty except for them.

“You told me.” He lifts Ardyn’s own hand and brings it to his face, against his cheek, feels the way Ardyn flinches away before settling into the touch. “In the darkness, you told me everything.”

He feels it all, the slide of Ardyn’s hand as it falls down to his shoulder, the warmth of the arm of the throne as he grabs onto it for purchase, and the gasp of air against his lips as he leans in.

Ardyn tastes like wine, long held in the stores of Lucis, dark red and bitter. The first kiss is slight, but the second is deeper, Ardyn hungrily pushing up into it and grabbing at Noctis’ back with one hand, the side of his thigh with another.

“On me,” Ardyn breathes out, hot to the touch for the first time in what Noctis imagines is centuries.

He lets himself be pulled into position, straddling Ardyn’s lap and running his fingers up the side of his jaw, against the stubble there.

“Come now,” Ardyn says, voice heavy, eyes cast down at Noctis’ lips, “you can do better than that.”

Noctis half-smirks at the challenge. “Forgot who I was with for a second.”

“I assure you, that won’t happen again.”

Nothing around them changes or shifts and Ardyn’s thighs are solid underneath Noctis’ weight, the two of them firmly in place, right where they’re supposed to be.

Noctis leans in and presses his lips to the side of Ardyn’s jaw and murmurs against his skin, “What was supposed to happen?”

“Not this,” Ardyn replies, as if he’s pleased but confused, and Noctis remembers the centuries old blood that stains him, the daemons that he must be fighting even now, the lies they likely whisper, and the blue glow of a Haven, of the Crystal, keeping Ardyn out.

“I didn’t know what would happen, not really, up until I walked in,” Noctis admits, wanting to reassure someone of the truth of this. Maybe himself, maybe Ardyn, maybe who Ardyn used to be. The man who looked at him in the dream. “And then I saw you, and I saw your anger.”

“Becoming, was it?”

Ardyn’s hands are on his lower back and Noctis nods to him as he slides them down to cup his ass, smiling at that in a way that seems to disarm Ardyn momentarily.

“It wasn’t just that. It was everything else I knew. So I saw the anger, but I also—I couldn’t ignore everything underneath.”

Ardyn growls at that, low in his throat, and pulls Noctis forward so that they’re flush against each other and Noctis can feel Ardyn’s cock, hard and hot, under his ass. So there’s no way Ardyn can mistake the similar state of Noctis’ own cock, pressed against his hip.

“You think you see me?” Ardyn says, sharp and dangerous, like glass on the ground glinting in the moonlight. A warning.

Noctis can’t help it. His smile is fond.

“I know I do.”

The kiss he leans in and takes this time is slow and languorous, and Ardyn follows his lead, lets Noctis move against him steadily and eases his grip when Noctis groans into his mouth.

He tastes, now, like the man he used to be, like champagne from a party neither of them want to be at, and Noctis can imagine it well. Tittering laughter and boring conversation, the two of them catching each other’s eyes from across the room and making silent plans to sneak away.

Their bodies pressed together in the hidden recesses of far flung corridors, Ardyn’s stubble against his throat as they laugh, both halfway drunk and happy with these few stolen moments.

When Noctis opens his eyes, Ardyn is looking at him with naked want and with something else beyond that.

“This doesn’t change my end goal,” he says, voice hoarse and cheeks flushed and Noctis wants to ask how long it’s been since he’s touched someone like this. “Do you understand that? Outside these walls it has been night for ten years, and for me it has been night much longer.”

The vitriol that may have once existed in those words, were things different, isn’t there. It feels like a simple statement of fact, the reality of the situation they find themselves in.

“I meant what I said,” Noctis tells him, and he finds that, for now at least, the world outside the room they’re in doesn’t matter. There is only the throne and the two of them upon it. “And I know you did, too. So, let’s end this. Together.”

There’s a weightlessness that settles into Noctis as he watches Ardyn watch him unbutton his pants, an acceptance of the fact that this is happening and everything that entails.

He’s unsure if, when Ardyn chuckles, it’s at his choice of undergarments or at the sight of his cockhead, slick with precome.

Either way the sound calms him, reminds him of the strange mixture of cruelty and kindness that occupies Ardyn, a feeling that goes hand in hand with the sensation of their touches scaling towards bruising in nature.

“Much too cumbersome,” Ardyn says as he pulls at the band of Noctis’ briefs, and Noctis feels half-crazy, his mind unable to wrap itself around that comment coming from someone who he saw walk around Lestallum in a _cravat_.

He wants to reply with some biting comment, but instead he watches dumbly as Ardyn lifts his hand and snaps his fingers, and then, a second too late, succumbs to a full body shiver because half of his clothes are gone. He’s left in only his grey socks and half-buttoned shirt. He doesn’t need to ask whether or not Ardyn will be staying dressed.

“Oh,” Noctis says, no longer worried about being witty, “ _fuck_ you.”

That gets the biggest smile yet. His dick is slightly wilted in the cold air, but still hard against his stomach, and he’s not moving away despite the unasked for goosebumps on his bare legs, despite the sudden flash of burgundy light that morphs into a bottle in Ardyn’s hand, and then slick wetness on his fingers.

“I wonder, will you call me ‘your majesty’?” he asks, and Noctis isn’t sure if he’s speaking just to hear himself talk or to distract from the way his hand is trembling, like he’s about to do some holy thing.

Noctis can’t help but huff in disbelief even as one of Ardyn’s hands, substantial in its width, grabs at his ass. He uses the fingers of the other, just one at first, to pull Noctis open, and Noctis plays tit for tat.

“Maybe if you ask nicely.”

Both of them know he’ll do no such thing and in answer Ardyn starts to fuck him on his fingers in earnest, using two of them now and digging in knuckle deep until he hits just the right spot and Noctis’ voice catches in his throat. He breathes out shakily, his cock already fully hard again and his bangs sticking to his forehead with sweat.

“Can you take a third?” Ardyn asks him, and it’s probably the nicest thing he’s ever done.

Noctis nods, swallowing a laugh at the absurdity of the moment and allowing Ardyn to shift him further up his lap, wondering if Ardyn is even aware of how gentle he’s suddenly being. He presses his forehead against Ardyn’s shoulder and breathes in tandem with the push of the third finger in, breathing out again when Ardyn starts to move.

With his eyes closed, Noctis becomes acutely aware of the drag of Ardyn’s clothed cock against his own, and it feels necessary to lick at his skin to sate the heat that builds up in his stomach at that.

Ardyn freezes for half a second at the feeling of Noctis’ tongue and it’s enough to make Noctis think he’s messed up somehow, thrown off the cover they have over this odd equilibrium they’ve somehow managed to maintain since he knelt in front of the throne.

But Ardyn just swallows and fucks into Noctis a few more times, his fingers brushing against Noctis’ prostate with renewed vigor, before pulling them out and leaning back.

Noctis expects some backhanded compliment about how good he looks like this, but instead Ardyn just steadies him and licks his lips, pupils blown and searching Noctis for something he doesn’t know how to give.

“You asked, earlier, what was supposed to happen when you came here,” Ardyn says, finally, his hand ghosting over the shaft of Noctis’ cock.

“You, ah.” Noctis gasps as Ardyn’s hand encircles the base of his cock and begins gliding up and down, using the precum leaking from the the tip as lubricant. “You didn’t really—answer.”

Ardyn hums in agreement, hand moving faster as he shifts under Noctis.

“I was going to kill you,” he says, and he doesn’t look away when Noctis focuses his gaze. “And you were going to kill me. Under the night sky, as promised, the both of us racing towards dawn.”

Noctis comes all over Ardyn’s hand, the sleeve of his shirt, mouth open and voice caught in his throat at the sight.

“So, no,” Ardyn continues, flicking his wrist to the side, his sleeve clean as he returns his hand to catch Noctis’ chin once more, “this was not planned for. But I am, you'll find, quite adaptable.”

“Well then,” Noctis says, ever demanding, ever used to getting what he wants or at least acting the part, “ _adapt_.”

They come together like two stars, a galaxy between them, and violence in the center of it all, inevitable with a collision of this magnitude. Ardyn sucks on Noctis’ lower lip, leaving it sore and bruised, and Noctis bites him back with vigor and the world is thrown off balance and then back again.

Ardyn’s cock is straining against the front of his pants, such that he has to steady himself before undoing them. As he does Noctis leans back, sucking a breath in, low and shallow.

“Too much?” Ardyn asks, looking amused but also concerned, as if his admittedly large and now fully visible cock is going to be the final straw. Long, and not without considerable width, there's an obscene amount of precum beaded at the flushed tip. Even when he doesn’t look down, Noctis can feel the press of it against his thigh.

The question is so deliriously strange that Noctis can only shake his head and snort out an undignified laugh.

“I’ll manage.”

There is a certain muted, untethered quality to the next moments, the type that stretch on forever even though they can’t possibly last that long. Noctis feels Ardyn’s hands on his hips and his hands on Ardyn’s shoulders as he rises up on his knees and positions himself, all of it dreamlike as he searches for something to tie him down in this place and time.

He finds it in Ardyn’s eyes, which belie the sharp grip of his hands, and are soft and rounded, not warm but not cold.

Caught in between, as Noctis feels the head of his cock at his entrance, he can only remember to breathe.

Ardyn is impatient but seemingly enthralled at the same time, watching as Noctis lowers himself down slowly, until he’s fully seated and burning with it, the stretch of Ardyn inside him. He closes his eyes and they’re still until Noctis feels the the dormant energy in Ardyn strike him like the crack of a whip against unmarred skin.

His eyes open and the world is in brilliant, if shadowed, color, Ardyn’s eyes molten gold and Noctis moves his hips, rising up and then down, and Ardyn moans, a hard won sound that makes Noctis dizzy with relief as they set a steady pace. Ardyn’s hands still holding onto him in a way that makes Noctis think he’ll never let go.

He finds his voice again, rough and tumble, as he asks: “Did you dream?”

“Ah...hm?” Ardyn is doing an admirable, if poor, job of pretending he's not having difficulty forming words.

“Before this, when we first met,” a sharp, inhaled breath, “did you dream?”

“No,” Ardyn answers, and Noctis feels himself slow, a panic rising in him because _what if I’m wrong, what if this isn’t what I'm meant to do_ , before Ardyn continues. “Dreaming requires sleep, which I...I have long not needed. But I did...feel something, a...pull.”

“To me,” Noctis says, his voice as steady as it can be in the moment.

Ardyn’s eyes flash in that way they do and something like a smile flits across his face.

“To you,” he agrees.

Noctis’ hands slide off of Ardyn’s shoulders and to the arms of the throne, cold, carved stone under his shaking fingers as he pulls himself up and nearly off the length of Ardyn’s cock, dizzy from the height of it. His lips are dry as he licks at them before acknowledging Ardyn’s now-possessive grip on his hips with a nod of assent.

Ardyn lifts his own hips from the seat of the throne and pushes up and in, fucking into Noctis fluidly and just _right_ , in a way that makes Noctis bare his throat, head back and crying out.

There aren’t words, so neither of them bother to try and find them, and it begins to feel like there isn’t a discernible difference between who makes what sound or moves which way. Noctis feels, distantly, as if he’s drunk, and knows at some point his arms give out, possibly around the time Ardyn stops holding him up and moves one of his hands to his newly hard and neglected cock.

“Yes, god, okay,” Noctis says, startled by the sound of his own voice and then reassured by the feeling of Ardyn smiling against his throat as they fall together.

“What do you want?” Ardyn asks, impossibly composed and seemingly in his element in this moment, if only because Noctis can’t see his eyes like this.

“You—god, just.” There’s nothing for Noctis to swallow, just the press of them so close together it’s nearer to an ache. “Come in me and—make me come. Will you?”

Ardyn says something he can only half-hear, but which still hits him like a strike of lightning to his core. He holds onto the words and uses them to fuel his exhausted movement, the up and down of his hips and clutching around Ardyn’s cock, his own cock in Ardyn’s hand, the feeling of which he can’t articulate as his mind goes to darkness.

It feels like the best parts of fighting would have, he’s blearily sure, as he comes between them with a gasping breath and, moments later, feels Ardyn come in him. There’s the sound of his name being said against his temple, as good as any prayer, and then just their panting in the open air, both of them light headed from getting what they wanted.

Noctis pulls away first, feeling an unconditional warmth spreading through him, and seeing it manifested as he looks up.

Blue lights, bright like stars are pulling away from him, looking like water droplets falling up. He only has so much time.

“Did you mean it,” he says, turning back to Ardyn, “when you said you’d do anything I asked of you?”

“It would seem so,” Ardyn answers, looking like, if Noctis were to catch him in just the right light, the man who once helped a little girl on the streets of Insomnia.

“Then come with me.” Half-faded and already unable to come back, Noctis can hear the desperation in his own voice.

For a weightless moment, everything hangs in the balance, and then Ardyn closes his eyes and nods.

He takes Noctis’ hand—and when dawn breaks, the throne room is empty.

**Author's Note:**

> in typical fashion i went "ardyn and noctis should have throne sex", tried to write just that, and then ended up needing 7k of buildup to make it work. if you like what i ended up with, let me know!
> 
> i also want to give a big thank you to all my friends who looked this one over before i posted it (many of you more than once)! you guys are the best cheerleaders i could ask for!
> 
> say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/koromarus) if you want, i'm always happy to talk about ardyn or whatever!! see you around!


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